Why Invest in 0-5?

By the age of 5, your child’s brain will have grown to 90% of its adult size.
But even earlier than that, by age 3, it’s already reached 82% of its size. This proves that the earliest days, months and years of your child’s life matter so much when it comes to early experiences that shape brain growth and development.

Your child is born able to learn and absorb your words faster than you can imagine.By the time your child is 3 years old, he or she should know or recognize about 1,000 words. This important milestone doesn’t happen on its own, though. It needs your efforts, but luckily they are simple. Having lots of conversations with your child, sharing songs and reading regularly will set him or her on a path for success. Children who learn fewer words by age 3 suffer with poorer vocabularies and are behind when they start school, often never catching up.

School success starts from the moment your baby is born. The most important education your child will ever receive takes place right at home – with you. You don’t need a lesson plan or fancy toys, just plenty of words, songs and love. Even if you do not read well, just making up stories based on pictures in a book or magazine will help your child learn.

Use it or lose it. Trillions of brain-cell connections, called neural synapses, form in your baby’s brain during the first few years of life. Synapses that do not “connect” in your child’s brain through early experiences, interactions and stimulation are unfortunately lost, and they don’t come back.

– From the First 5 California parents website. Click here to visit the site.